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The Harvesters

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1565. Antwerp, the Southern Netherlands.

You are here

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

Summer harvest landscape: peasants cut and bundle tall golden wheat while a group eats lunch under a pear tree, with a valley and distant bay beyond.
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

It is the height of summer, and the wheat is taller than the people cutting it. Some workers swing scythes, others tie sheaves, and a few carry jugs up a path cut through the field. Under a pear tree a group has stopped for lunch: bread, porridge and pears, and one man has fallen asleep with his legs sprawled out. Beyond them the land opens all the way to a hazy bay with ships. Bruegel painted this as one of a series on the times of the year, and it is among the first great European paintings in which ordinary work in the land is the whole subject. Everyone is busy, and somehow the whole scene feels at rest.

Look closely

  1. Find the sleeping man under the tree.
  2. Follow the path through the wheat. Who is walking on it?
  3. Look past the field to the far distance. What can you see out there?

While you sit

It is noon and very hot. Some people are working and some have stopped. You are allowed to be one of the ones who stopped.

Your seat in the galleries: a broad oak bench with a folded linen cloth on it, as if laid out for lunch.

About the work

Title
The Harvesters
Artist
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Date
1565
From
Antwerp, the Southern Netherlands
Medium
Oil on oak
Size
Overall, including added strips at top, bottom, and right, 46 7/8 x 63 3/4 in. (119 x 162 cm); original painted surface 45 7/8 x 62 7/8 in. (116.5 x 159.5 cm)
Rights
Public domain
Image
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record
The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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